440 Woodcocks, Fieldfares, and Redwings. 



which the latter had been raised several feet. This instance 

 sufficiently shows that the greater attention which is now 

 bestowed on natural history, and the circumstance of devi- 

 ations from ordinary rule being more habitually recorded, 

 require also to be taken into consideration by those who 

 would explain phenomena, which have hitherto been ac- 

 counted rare, or quite overlooked. 



In a Volume of the old series, I inserted, on the authority 

 of a friend, on the accuracy of whose observation I place strict 

 reliance, that the fieldfare thrush had been noticed to reside the 

 summer through in a particular wood in Aberdeenshire. A cor- 

 respondent also writes me from Yorkshire, that he has watched 

 this bird, with the assistance of a glass, in July ; but was un- 

 successful in the endeavour to ascertain whether it had a nest 

 near. Mr. Hewitson, who discovered it breeding abundantly 

 in Norway, relates : — " We were surprised to find them (so 

 contrary to the habits of other species of this genus with 

 which we are acquainted) breeding in society. Their nests 

 were at various heights from the ground, from 4 to 30 or 

 40 feet or upwards, mixed with old ones of the preceding year. 

 They were, for the most part, placed against the trunk of the 

 spruce fir : some were, however, at a considerable distance 

 from it, upon the upper surface, and towards the smaller end 

 of the thicker branches. They resemble most nearly those 

 of the ring ousel." Of the young, in immature plumage, 

 we yet require a description ; which it is wished that some 

 one, who may now possess the opportunity, will soon supply. 

 A dealer in birds, who annually raises a considerable num- 

 ber of young thrushes and blackbirds, assures me that, a few 

 seasons ago, he purchased of a boy a nest of young red- 

 wings, near Barnet, in Middlesex; and, as I am quite certain 

 that he could not have mistaken the species, from his thorough 

 acquaintance with the smaller British land birds, I see no 

 reason to doubt his assertion ; the more especially, as other 

 information, which he furnished me with at the same time, I 

 knew, of my own experience, to be scrupulously correct. As 

 this person rears every summer a great variety of young birds 

 from the nest (of every species which he can obtain), I had 

 asked him questions relative to those species which ordinarily 

 winter only in the south of England. The fieldfare and 

 bramblefinch he had never known to breed, the redpole very 

 seldom ; and he had occasionally obtained siskins in their 

 moulting plumage ; which latter I have seen : as regards the 

 redwing thrushes he was quite positive.* 



* As the redwing, during its stay in this country, flies in looser and 

 more straggling flocks than the fieldfare, and of which the memhers depart 



